We went two weeks ago to Duke and met with a pediatric GI doctor who was pretty great, I think. He was NOT dismissive, which was huge for me. For years, we have been seeing doctors who continue to say "just give him more miralax!" as they wave me away. This doctor did not do that. Thankfully.
He did think that Andy is super duper backed up.
Are you sick of reading about poo on here????? Sorry.
So he suggested we do a "massive clean out." He sent us home with the recipe for this and warned that it will be very explosive and happen very quickly and Andy will have little control over it, it will be coming out so quickly. We were told to camp him near the pot.
Super exciting, right?
The child did not go. At all.
A "massive clean out" and he didn't go....?!! Pardon my language, but wtf, doc??? We even upped the amount of ex-lax squares and he still didn't budge.
I emailed the doctor on that Monday, knowing I was going out of town on Wednesday, and needed to have some massive movement before I left, or I would be leaving a struggling Andy with a daddy who wouldn't know what to do (I mean, he would manage, but I would feel terrible leaving Andy in that condition).
Doctor suggested we do a full colonoscopy prep: one bottle of gatorade (not a massive one) and one entire bottle of miralax. Andy stayed home from school Tuesday and the "big bang" started around 12:30 and went pretty strongly from there on. It was impressive. But it worked. There was....ummm...a lot to get out.... and he did.
So the current plan is to maintain the milk of magnesia every day with one exlax square to aim for a daily dump (please help me find humor in the poo talk). Hopefully cleaning him out helps us to start fresh to get to that goal.
I am optimistic and this doctor got back to me immediately when the massive clean out failed. He is responsive and seems to want to fix this. He has a series of tests he wants to run if we can't get him regular on this current regime. None of them sound very fun, so I am hoping and praying we don't have to put Andy through that.
This mom stuff is hard, y'all.
Thank you to those who have reached out or thought about Andy during all this. It means the world. I know it is just poop.... but when it is your baby and he is in pain, it just stinks....get it? ha. One more poo joke.
